by E. F. Benson
The tree on which it was sitting was part of a rookery, and it went up to the top towards evening to have a chat.
There were a good many rooks at home, and I watched the interview with some curiosity. It evidently thought it was making an impression, for I could hear it talking with ease and animation. There were some twenty rooks listening to it at first, but by degrees, they all tailed away, and it was left quite alone. So it made a few reflections of a perfectly appalling character, and waited for the result. But nobody gave it a piece of sugar to stop its unchristian sentiments, and it realised at that moment, perhaps for the first time, that it was not quite everybody. It came thoughtfully down again, and walked into its cage which was standing on the lawn, and appeared lost in meditation. It did not even remember to curse the housemaid, when she covered it up for the night, and I recollect her saying to me in the morning that she thought it must be ill.
When the personality of my parrot became too oppressive, I used to unbend my mind over my jackdaw. The parrot thought the jackdaw low, and would never take the slightest notice of him, except once, when he was standing close to its cage, it took the opportunity to spit at him through the wires. It would shrug its shoulders when it saw me speaking to the jackdaw, and think that it was a very suitable companion for me. The only thing in common between them was that they both swore, when they were annoyed.
The jackdaw was always much more of a companion than the parrot, though he was a low pothouse sort of bird. Still, when the parrot had been more than usually unkind, I longed for sympathy of any sort, and the jackdaw never refused that.
He always took the keenest interest in whatever I happened to be doing. He used to sit on the table if I was reading or writing, full of great thoughts. The turning over of leaves in a book, for some reason he regarded as a personal insult to himself, and he would peck at the fresh page with a zest that never seemed to lose the first fanatic zeal which had inspired it. He had a tinful of water in which he used to wash every morning, spilling something more than half of it on the carpet. When he had finished washing, it was necessary to upset the rest all over the room. This was an almost invariable part of the process; I made spasmodic efforts to prevent it, but all to no purpose. One morning when the carpet was particularly marshy, I tried the effect of giving him no bath at all; but he made up for that by getting into my tea-caddy, which happened to be open, and fluttered the tea all over the breakfast table. But when I remembered on the next occasion, on which the mess was unbearable, to shut the tea can, I thought I could laugh at fate. Not so. A harsh discordant voice summoned me to my bedroom, where I found that a misguided and improvident desire for cold water had led him to trust himself to the hidden depths of my water jug, where he was in imminent danger of drowning.
One morning my watch was not to be found. The parrot of course knew all about it, but it was too busy practising a new sort of sneeze to attend to me. However a watch hidden by a jackdaw is not at all likely to be stolen, though there is a certain risk of treading on it. I cursed myself mildly for having left it on the table, and sat down to breakfast.
The parrot laughed coldly and mockingly, and the jackdaw seemed to have something to tell me, but thought better of it, and went off to say three sharp words to a golf ball, which he had long regarded with entirely unfounded and unconcealed dislike. After breakfast I satisfied myself that the watch was not in any danger of being trodden on, from being playfully concealed under the hearth rug, and mentioned to my servant that there was a watch somewhere about, and that I should be glad to have it, when it turned up. Before long he returned with the teapot in his hand, and there at the bottom parboiled and ruined, lay what had once been an excellent timekeeper. I imprisoned the jackdaw under the “Times” as a sort of penance, and he soon ate his way out through the only leading article that I had wanted to read.
Alas, that was really his last piece of mischief! Early in the spring he ruined his digestion by eating too largely of the worms, which had been out of reach for months of frost, and in the early days of March he hopped into his cage for the last time, shutting the door behind him as he had always done, and in the morning I found him dead. An old servant asked me if she might have the poor little body, she had liked him so, she said, and she bore it away with a sort of melancholy triumph. A week afterwards she brought me a large square parcel discreetly wrapped up in brown paper, and would I accept of it. It would look so nice, she thought, on the chimney-piece of my sitting-room. I opened the parcel with faint apprehension, and it was as I thought. The jackdaw was standing in a bower of brilliant everlasting flowers, with his head turned very much to one side to obviate the depth of case, which his beak would otherwise have entailed. His beak was slightly parted, and as if to commemorate the cause of his death, there dangled from it a small pink string. Behind was a blue sky, which grew on the low horizon into a glowing sunset.
“It’s so natural like,” said the old lady, “picking up a worm.”
The parrot coughed and sneezed when he saw it. Such things do not interest him.
AT KING’S CROSS STATION
THE pathos of small and trivial disappointments has to me a heart-searching sadness, which I feel to be quite unreasonable, but against which I am perfectly powerless. The great tragic figures of history have a certain recompense in the grandeur and sublimity of their woes, and though our eyes are dim when we read of their mighty sorrows, yet simply because they are mighty we feel the keenness of them less; and it is in the small unnoticed sorrows of average people that I realise most deeply the infinite pathos of human life.
It is the story of one of these small disappointments that I am about to describe to you. There will be no loud-sounding grief in these pages, no wailing nor beating of the breast, only a few silent tears shed by a silent unattractive woman, a little wretchedness, perhaps a sleepless hour or two, and for me a regret that will not soon be still. You will think, I daresay, that it does not matter much; and I would not contradict you; after all, what is one little disappointment among the million aching tragedies round us?
One dark winter afternoon I was leaving London for the north. I had come up to town on matters of business which had arranged themselves satisfactorily, I had lunched with a friend whose company is always particularly congenial to me, I had an interesting novel, the corner seat in a third class carriage, and a hot water tin; above all I was going home, and was purely happy in a purely animal way.
Outside, the densest fog was drifting in at the yawning mouth of the station, like some cold flood of poisonous disease. The air was a tangle of broken sounds, engines yelled, doors banged, and couplings clashed and jangled together, all coming to my ears through the thick palpable atmosphere, as if through layers of wool. On the platform opposite to my carriage, a train of emigrants was just starting for some northern port; many had evidently got to that stage, when suffering, grown dumb and weary with waiting, is often mistaken for indifference, and sadness for sullenness. The frost had laid a heavy hand on the town during the last few days, and the cheerless warmth of the station was only just enough to melt the little icicles, which dripped dismally from the eaves of the carriage on to the ledge outside, reminding me of two crusty maiden ladies whom I had seen that morning, who had determined to be no pleasanter to me than they could possibly help. Such things, when one is particularly conscious of a happy background to one’s own thoughts, strike merely the artistic eye, and leave the inward eye undimmed. I thought only how completely dreary the whole scene was, and it added its mite to my own sense of well-being.
Opposite to me there sat a young woman of a particularly English stamp, who had seldom, perhaps, known the stress of actual want, but never comfort. She had a hard, rather unpleasant face, the surface of which suggested goldbeater’s skin highly polished and crudely tinted. Her eyes were indeterminate in colour, they were neither green nor yellow nor blue, and reminded me of the buttons on a Norfolk jacket of my own, the colours of which concentrated on their polishe
d surface the sober hues of the wool. Her nose was of that order which is entirely concealed by a profile view; and there were high spots of colour on her cheeks, which emphasised her already emphatic cheek bones. Her mouth, which she held slightly open, displayed several prominent teeth. The lower lip seemed to have been intended for another upper lip, and its corners were extremely unfinished. A possible expression of honesty in her whole face might, perhaps, be merely due to its marked want of ability.
She wore a small hat, which sat in the front row, as it were, of an orchestral fringe of gigantic proportions, composed of vaguely-coloured hair, which, like her lower lip, seemed to have been designed for some one else. Her black jacket was very short in the sleeves, and displayed a wrist with a prominent bone, and her gloves were far from covering the deficiencies of her jacket. Round her neck she wore a massive chain and locket, too magnificent to be valuable; and an aimless braid ran round the button-holes and edges of her jacket, seeming to terminate in a side pocket, which bulged largely, and from which dangled a fragment of limp whitey-brown paper. Beneath her skirt might be seen elastic-sided boots, the toes of which were encased in a sort of patent leather; a curious white line? strayed round them, imitating apparently a set of loops and crosscuts, as performed by a brilliant skater.
Next her sat a middle-aged gentleman, who was particularly odious to me, because I felt sure that he was in the same brutally contented state of mind as myself. He was smoking a good cigar, and was reading the Pall Mall. As the woman took her seat, he turned to her and said, “You know, miss, this is a smoking carriage.”
There was no audible reply to this remark, but her lower lip drooped a little more, and then resumed its normal position. An uncertain movement of the tongue against her prominent teeth seemed to convey acquiescence.
The middle-aged gentleman turned away again, and resumed his Pall Mall. The woman cast a furtive glance round, as if she had been guilty of something rather improper, and out of her jacket pocket drew a woolly mass, which resolved itself into a darning needle, a piece of purple worsted thread, and an old black stocking. She removed her gloves, and made several ineffectual attempts to thread her needle. Eventually she worried a small end of the worsted through, and with her teeth persuaded the rest to follow, and began darning with large uncertain stitches. Her hands were cold and moist, and she occasionally wiped them against her jacket, and her fingers trembled rather. She sat in an awkward position, with her shoulders sloping forward, and her lower lip drooping more than ever. Now and then she drew a handkerchief from her pocket, and squeezed the end of her nose with it. This action was usually accompanied with a deprecating glance round, and more than once she caught my eye. After a little reflection I decided that hers were green.
It was during one of these submissive movements, that a porter came round and lit some more of the gas-lamps outside in the station, that I saw with greater distinctness, how ill-favoured and slovenly she was. Her gloves had fallen from her lap on to the carriage floor, and she had not noticed them.
I was about to call her attention to this fact, when the ticket collector looked in and asked for our tickets. The middle-aged gentleman grunted “Season,” and grumblingly drew out a greasy leather case, with a cardboard square sticking up between two bank-notes. The other tickets were shown, and still the young woman made no sign, but darned on with greater assiduity. The ticket collector had a harsh unpleasant voice.
“Now, young woman, your ticket.”
Slowly and fumblingly she took out the whitey-brown paper parcel from her pocket, and affected to feel in the corners of it. I think I never saw so poor a dramatic display. It was intensely obvious that she had no ticket at all. To my mind, at that moment, the marked want of ability entirely accounted for the possible honesty of expression to which I have alluded above.
The other pocket and the stocking-foot were then subjected to the same aimless scrutiny; but their assets were only a few cake crumbs and a brass thimble.
The collector grew impatient.
“Well, where’s your ticket? You can’t keep the train waiting.”
The lower lip gathered itself up for speech.
“I don’t know where it is.”
“How did you lose it?”
No answer.
“Where are you going to?”
“I shall be all right if I can get to Grantham.”
The words came out in sloppy syllables. Before she spoke, one knew from her boots, her jacket, her gloves, her fringe, her splendid locket, exactly how she would speak.
“The fare’s eight and nine. Be quick, please, the train is over time already.”
A further investigation produced a leather purse with a broken steel clasp, fastened round with a frayed elastic band. She drew out a florin, then two more shillings, a three-penny-piece, and four coppers.
“Come, that’s not enough,” said the man. “You’ll have to get out of this; no defrauding the company. I could give you in charge for trying to travel without a ticket.”
She gathered up her work and thrust it into the front of her jacket. A band-box, and a small plant in a pot formed the rest of her luggage. She did not appear to mind much, and stepped out on to the damp platform, and stood beneath a flaring gas-lamp. If she had been a prima donna, receiving the ovation of a crowded house, she would have chosen exactly that position. She laid her bandbox on the platform, and put the plant by its side.
The ticket collector had moved on to the next carriage, and I heard his harsh voice demanding tickets. The woman followed him with her eyes, and when his back was turned, took two steps towards the carriage, from which she had just been evicted, and then stopped. She could probably have entered unseen, though whether her possible honesty or her distrust of her own ability checked her, I do not know.
She went back to her former position, and drew the whitey-brown paper from her pocket. It contained a hard green rasping apple. She took a large bite out of it and proceeded to chew it. A piece of decent size was stowed away in her cheek. Just as she was raising her hand to take another bite, the corners of her mouth, which had shown a bitter tension, for which after the first bite I had held the apple responsible, broke down, and two large tears gathered in her eyes. She did not abandon the apple, but she took out her handkerchief, and convulsive movements of the throat mingled themselves with the swallowing. The whole scene lasted not more than twenty or thirty seconds, and we slid slowly out of the station.
Then it was that the pathos of the whole scene came upon me, the pitiful incongruity of the band-box, the tears, and the apple. It was too late; I threw down the window, and looked back. I could still see her, a misty figure through the fog, and one hand was raised to her mouth. Whether it contained the apple or the handkerchief, I do not know; but for me the bitter memory was made.
Ten minutes later, my eye caught sight of a dark object on the floor; she had forgotten to take her gloves.
THE SOUND OF THE GRINDING
FOR many years I used to live in London. My rooms looked out on to the Embankment, where sometimes even in a stifling June, the breath of country summers is felt at evening, when the tide turns seawards, and the foul water is carried off to the ocean. In that soft hour that follows sunset I could sometimes make the broad stream talk to me of the pleasant time, when its waters glided under the green shadows of the upper valleys, and plunged into the dark coolness below the weirs, where they wandered for a time, lost in the happy trouble of circling backwaters, before they ran on between noisy banks, and broke against sullen bridges, and were saddled with grim burdens. And when the tide first turned, and the wind blew up-stream, I could sometimes taste, or thought I tasted, the infinite freshness of the sea.
But there was little else to remind one of the existence of anything so remote from the disquiet of streets and hurrying crowds, and of all crowds the London crowd is the saddest; that ceaseless stress of men and women who are all hurrying, who may not stop, who have not time to think. They work to gain
a tranquillity which few of them attain. Their only thought is to make some money, to earn enough to give them a little leisure at their lives’ grey end, in which they can rest for a minute, can get drowsy before they fall asleep. And the very contrasts are not the least sad part of this dismal tragedy. On Bank holidays there are the same crowds, to whom the habit of hurrying has become a necessity, whose leisure is as feverish as their work. This eternal necessity of work however, brings with it a sort of consolation under certain circumstances, which is as melancholy as its sorrows.
One morning, I remember, I was passing down the Embankment, when I saw a small crowd, chiefly of children form itself in front of me. The centre of its attraction seemed to be a policeman, who was carrying in his arms a small still burden. The explanation was forthcoming. A small boy was my informant.
“There’s a poor baby fell off the wall, and killed ‘itself. Ain’t it a shame?” The small still body was the baby which had just been killed. Yes, it did seem a shame. But that was all, it was only a poor baby. And my informant proceeded to black my shoes, with hands untouched by water or emotion.
Just below my window, there used to be a recess, where an old man last year sold chestnuts, and where a little abutment of wall sheltered him from easterly winds. One day, as I came home, I saw a couple of men putting up useless iron railings there, with spikes at the top, so as to shut this little corner out of the street. The chestnut seller had not been there for some weeks. It had been bitterly cold weather, and he used to cough a good deal before his disappearance. He was probably suffering from some weakness in the chest; that is very common in London, where there is a good deal of illness. Two days after this iron railing had been erected, he came back, wheeling his little stove in front of him. He looked very thin, and he wore a scarf round his throat. There was a bitter wind blowing at the time, and the corner which used to shelter him was quite inaccessible. He stood there for a few minutes, and then wheeled his stove away, and I lost sight of him in the crowd. Perhaps he found another sheltered corner, perhaps he did not. But the worst of it is that the tall iron railing is entirely useless.
